by LeAnn Mason
Having pretended I wasn’t shaking from an adrenaline crash, we headed along the hallway toward the light I could see creeping its warm and beckoning fingers beneath the oppressive wooden doors barring its entry to this chilling estate. The imagined warmth saturated my body, returning feeling to those parts that had leached heat into the very mortar of the Leone Estate during Risa’s pep talk. Unbidden, a flicker of toned, golden skin flashed in my mind. Glowing golden eyes, a crooked smile showing very straight, white, and a bit pointy, teeth.
And the sparse blond hair trailing from a button navel…
Crap. Now I needed to burn the image from my mind so I could function. I didn’t need a tomato-red blush to steal over my cheeks every time I saw Rory from now on, so I had to find a way to scrub my brain of the all-too-delicious conjurings. He could probably scent my emotional state or something equally as amazing and invasive.
“Hey, give me a second. Ebony wants to meet you. She already feels protective of you. I knew she’d love you like I do.” She winked and shooed me out into the heavy air. After a few moments, a scratch at the heavy door clued me in to Ebony’s emergence. Yanking at the handle, I watched a slender black wolf slip out as soon as her lithe body could twist through the space.
“You’re beautiful,” I murmured in awe. This new experience helped keep me afloat after the stress of Risa’s confrontation. “Can I touch you?” I lifted a hand in question as I watched the dark animal for signs of acquiescence. With a dip of her head, she stepped forward into my palm.
Permission granted.
My hand and eyes roved over her plush black fur, noticing the gray interspersed along her shoulders. Such unique coloring, both soft and coarse. I’d remember this feeling for the rest of my meager life.
My adrenaline crashed, making me feel lightheaded in the bright light. I needed to sit down. The steps would have to do. Head lowered to hang between my bent knees, I tried to calm my breathing, to clear my mind of the fear, hand still wrapped in Ebony’s plush coat. I couldn’t bring myself to separate from her as stinging radiated from several places on my face and neck made that hope fall flat. The aches from Risa’s weight were another physical reminder, but after a few minutes, I was able to sit up without wanting to vomit.
I needed a distraction.
I startled, eyes flying open, when a warm, wet sensation met my skin. A tongue. Quick flicks grazed my cheek where I knew the scrapes to exist. Cleaning. She tried to help, cleaning what she could of my ailments, both seen and unseen. It was just what I’d needed.
I moved my hand to rub along a pointed ear and along her neck, curling myself around the glorious animal. “Thank you. I feel better now. You can go check on Jason if you’d like.” I knew they’d be worried about him alone with the queen even if only in this instance. Standing, I moved to let her back inside the estate so she could assist her man.
Alone again, I looked around at the lovely foliage, feeling a little lighter, I thought about what it would take to cultivate it under normal circumstances. A lot of fertilizer, of which manure and compost are great and equally repellant in stench, sometimes even teeming with maggots. I shivered. Those fat little worms gave me the heebie-jeebies. I knew that they were vital, but something about their appearance always freaked me out. Earthworms, on the other hand, I liked those squirmy, slimy wrigglers. Don’t ask me why one and not the other.
I sidetracked myself further, noting that I hadn’t seen any of the poor brown worms washed onto the flagstone path with the rains, only to be beached, unable to find their way back to the moist soil they could burrow into to survive. I always hated to see the poor little things shriveled and dried, left as husks on a manmade surface.
“Why do you look as though you’ve just sucked a lemon?” Rory’s confused question startled me from my imaginings… and dumped me right back where I didn’t want to be.
Heat stole up my neck as I saw a bare god standing before me.
But he wasn’t naked. My traitorous mind just clung to the images as though they were a floating door next to a sinking ship. A lifeline.
Aaaaand death. I chuffed a self-deprecating laugh at the fact that my biggest ally in life was turning traitor because of a paranormal creature who wasn’t actually supposed to exist.
Oh, and he was a prince.
Straightening my frames, I reined my wayward reminiscence to a manageable level. I could do this. Smart girls ruled the world, darn it. I could sideline a deadly attraction to do my job. I really could. “Did you bring me a music player?” I held out my hand to reinstate my inquiry and draw his attention away from my still-pink face.
“I brought you a glass of water. Thought you might need rehydrating after your… encounter.” He narrowed his eyes, tilting his head slightly like he was angling for a better look at my face. “Are you all right? I don’t smell too much blood, so I assume the injuries I see are all there are?”
A series of jerky nods was my only response. I didn’t want to speak just then. I was busy trying to focus on the fact that he was acting almost concerned.
Chocolate eyes searched my face, probably my scent, again, too, as he slapped a phone heavily into my still outstretched palm. “Usually, I use my phone for music. It’s most convenient.” He finally answered.
He was right. I did the same. The thought warmed me, making me want to slap some sense into myself. Instead, I pretended his words held no bearing past the empirical value the data held. As it should be.
“Want to tell me what you have up your sleeve, Beauty?” The Shifter heir didn’t like being ignored. In the dark—figuratively, at least—he twitched, waiting for me to explain myself.
“Does the mentality of the shift linger?” I asked abruptly. Was that why he was grumpy? His eyes were back to their normal chocolate, hiding his lion. I could see no physical attributes,
“What? That’s pretty random. Aren’t you going to tell me about the music player? Do you not have one? I can have one of the staff set one up for—”
“No, it’s not like that. I wanted access to your device specifically. It will give me more information so I don’t have to guess as much…” I trailed off as I searched his phone for whatever music-buying venue he preferred, hoping it was one of the larger ones that tended to have a wider variety of genres and songs under its umbrella. I found the telltale orange icon and clicked, feeling Rory’s keen awareness hovering over my shoulder. From his much higher vantage point, it wasn’t difficult to see what I did, and I felt like I held the metaphorical spotlight but only stared blankly into the darkness beyond.
My shoulder twitched in an attempt to shrug off his phantom weight. Ugh. “Okay, so I have a hypothesis I’d like to test today.” I’d pulled up the application that had cached playlists and began thumbing through the selection. Rock and a few older country songs were most prominent. Flicking my braid from the front of my shoulder to the back as I turned to face Rory sent the whip-like tendril lashing across the guy’s looming face and surrounded me in a silent scream of horror. My mouth dropped wide but didn’t utter a sound, frozen by the intense notion that I was about to become lion chow. “Ohmygosh, I am so sorry!”
The horror! Should I drop the phone and start running? No. Keep the phone and call for help. Yeah. Much better idea.
Spinning on my sneakered heel, I gripped the device tightly. Didn’t want to lose that lifeline. “Twice in one day!” I whisper-screamed, preparing to make a never-had-a-shot kind of run for it.
A dulcet laugh boomed through the space. The enticing sound wrapped me in its warm embrace, ensuring I lingered, waiting to hear more of the honeyed sound—a sound I was almost positive surprised him as much as it had me. I didn’t think Rory was much the laughing type, and a moment ago, I was positive he absolutely wasn’t one to laugh when he was hit in the face. Never mind that it was completely unintentional, and never mind that it was only with a little fishtail braid of brunette hair.
Taking a hit to the face was taking a hit to the fac
e. People didn't let that kind of thing slide.
“Don’t run. I won’t bite,” he chided, a light chuckle permeating his words.
I still couldn’t bring myself to turn and face him. Startled, I unclenched my hand when a raucous tune about getting naked and going down spewed rather impressively from the phone’s tiny speaker. As if in slow motion, I watched with renewed horror as the prince of the Shifters’ phone plunged toward the stone pathway as if committing suicide.
Only, it never reached the destructive surface. It was plucked from the air with a speed by a hand that I could barely see, let alone ever have fathomed possible. Dark but lightening eyes bore into me as my own snapped to his in an awed, silent type of question.
“Wow. That was… fast.” Lame, I know.
“Perk of the lion.” He shrugged, halting the suggestive song with a touch. “Did you still want this?” he asked, holding the instrument back out in my direction, hand open. An invitation… or dare?
Lord help me, I’d accept. Rory had me well and truly intrigued, and I wanted to be the one to help him. Without breaking eye contact, except to check where exactly the phone was held, I snapped up the device. I had to clench my muscles to stop the shiver wanting to wrack my body at the zing of warmth suffusing my fingertips where they brushed his calloused palm.
I was in so much trouble with this guy. There was no way I could have him, and there was no way he’d want me, so I needed to just… shut it down.
I fixed my frames and cleared my throat as I began again. “Okay. So, have you ever used music to help you focus or, conversely, to stop thinking about something? Get lost in the melodies and forget your troubles?” I asked wistfully, inadvertently letting my fondness for the practice color my tone. He didn’t miss it. The keen interest lighting his features gave concession to continue.
“I want to see if we can find music, a… sound that will distract or calm or relax your lion. Something that we can use to enable you to be around magical types. You know, so you can be all royal.” I shrugged. That explanation made me sound stupid, so maybe this called for more show and less tell. “What do you listen to most often?”
“Rock.”
“And how does it make you feel when you listen?” I asked, thumbing through the list, taking mental inventory of the stock. Shifting my weight to my other foot, I looked toward the bench—our bench? —deciding I’d rather do these experiments sitting down. I’d be good if Rory chose to stand though. It’d keep him that much further from my proximity and at a more… clinical distance. Sitting, I took a moment to soak up the ambience. Heavy moisture hung in the air, smelling thickly of verdant foliage and nectar-laden blossoms. Gardenia, my favorite flower, perfumed the air, which I pulled greedily into my nostrils, savoring the pungent floral aroma, and my eyes fell closed in bliss.
I hadn’t smelled the real thing in a long time. Gardenias didn’t do well in most climates. They were a fickle beast of a flower and tended to die if not treated just right. This garden though, had several large bushes along the perimeter, allowing for the deliciousness to reach every inch of the cultivated space to some degree.
“You sidetrack easily, don’t you?”
I didn’t want to comment on the fact that I’d forgotten his presence for a mere moment and acknowledge the truth of his words, so I deflected back to my original point. “How does your music make you feel? Does it have any kind of impact on your mood… your lion?”
“Well, I’d say usually I feel energized. Like I could move forward, face whatever petty issue I had to at the time.”
“Do you think if you could hear nature sounds outside of this place, it would help to ground you? Maybe keep the lion from reaching out so much?”
Rory’s look of perplexity told me he either didn’t think so and that I was daft, or he’d never thought of that and chided himself. Internally, of course. “I don’t know.”
“What is your favorite thing about your garden?” I needed to evoke some kind of feeling from him. I needed to pinpoint just what he loved about being here. If I could. There was always the possibility that this train of thought would get blasted off its rails and go absolutely nowhere. But that was all right. It happened a lot in the scientific community. You just had to try again.
And again.
“Here, if you’re not sure…” I searched his music app for “nature sounds.” Up cropped a number of water-type sounds. I tapped the first on the list. The sound of rain pattering rhythmically burst forth immediately, and I cast a look toward the place Rory now stood, hovering again, in front of where I sat on the little bench. Our positions weren’t much better than when standing, but I needed to just get right on over it and keep moving forward with my attempts.
To his credit, Rory at least seemed to be taking my attempts seriously. His head canted to one side, and a little crease etched between his brows as he listened to the pattering sound. The pinched features told me more than words probably would. That was not his happy place.
Next sounded crashing waves. After a slight head shake, I moved on. I bypassed the sounds that he wouldn’t really associate with this garden, moving to an album better rounded, combining at least a few various natural sounds I myself had heard within the walls of this little slice of magically cultivated paradise. I hit on a kind of burbling with a couple of timely bird calls interspersed, but the birdsong wasn’t familiar.
CHAPTER 19
“Wow. I mean…”
“Whoa there, Turbo,” Allya pushed my flailing arm demonstrating my blown mind away from her face and continued down the steps of the Archives. I’d hurried to my “supernatural” tutoring session with Marie when all of my attempts to smooth Rory’s furrowed brow with musical relaxation were dead ends. I’d thought that the nature sounds would have been the way to go. It seemed like the logical step with the garden as his “happy place.”
Alas, my hypothesis had thus far proved incorrect, and Rory had dismissed me for my evening lesson with a weary hand wave. He also assured me that he would inform his mother that I had left the premises and would return in the morning.
Was it cowardly of me to be grateful for being cut out of dealing with the mercurial matriarch? Maybe I just knew a little about self-preservation. That woman was not good for my long-term health.
Like all too many things found in Grimm Hollow.
“How many different types of Fae do you think there are?” Which fairy tale creatures were truth? How much of what was said about them true?
“I’m not really sure. I know that there are hardly any still in Grimm Hollow though. I guess they pulled some crap with the Vampire royal family and were basically banned.” Allya shrugged, hands wrapped up in her red cloak. I still wasn’t sure what the story was about the garment, but Allya appeared mighty attached to the thing. I had yet to see her without it on. I figured it played a part in why Jason, and almost anyone else, referred to her as “Red” or “Scarlet.” She often clenched an edge in her grip, working a nail absently across the fabric as if she were picking at a crust of dirt only she knew to be there. Maybe it was something harder to clean… like blood. My friend was definitely haunted, but she had also blossomed since I’d last seen her in Winchester.
My eyes flitted to the sheathed knife at her thigh, the silver handle glinting with every stride under the streetlamps’ hovering light.
“The stories never talk about rabbit and deer Shifters. I wonder why? I get that predators would be more volatile and exciting, I guess.”
“It’s just not sexy enough to think about the Shifter dude next door turning into a white, fluffy bunny with a twitching nose and cotton tail,” she snorted at her imagery. “I mean those humans are not going to be massively built, muscles for days, and have that too-cocky alpha attitude that naive girls covet. They wouldn’t if they had to deal with said alpha brutes,” Allya grumpily ended her rant. Rubbing absently at the remaining scarring at the base of her throat. Another preoccupied habit she’d done since she’d woken.<
br />
I could see her point, but I also knew she was full of it. She was totally hooked on her Type-A wolf Shifter and was well on her way to being one herself. There wasn’t a single ounce of fat on her, not that there ever had been, but before, she was just… skinny. Now she was all lean muscle, a weapon always on standby.
“Have you seen any Vampires?” Marie had said there was a whole clan in Grimm Hollow but that most were in some kind of self-imposed exile.
“Not that I know of. Elsie says they’re not like versions depicted in fiction, which is good. The idea of something dead continuing to function as if still alive?” Allya shivered dramatically. Shaking out her disgust down to her boot-clad toes twisting on the unmarred pavement beneath our feet as we traversed back toward the diner, which was becoming a favorite. The huge white mansion situated at the head of the main drag caught my attention as we marched across its pristine greenway. The Coven House as it was deemed. Allya was half Witch. The other supernatural half was Shaman. She now also carried the spirit of a wild wolf within herself.
Unique. Nothing else, anywhere else, was like my friend. But then, I’d known that well before I’d been brought into the metaphorical “light”.
“What’s with the yellow-tinged aura, friend?” Allya asked, cajoling me with a bump to the shoulder that forced me several feet away from my original trajectory.
“What does the color mean?” I wondered how accurate her understanding of the auras was.
Another experiment for another day.
“How do you like being a Witch? Are you able to do much? Do you have to go to the coven house?” There was simply too much to learn. Too many thoughts, ideas, and questions circling my mind. I had a hard time staying on-task.
Just ask Rory.
“Lemon color seems to be like sadness or fear. I see it in Elsie quite a bit when we talk about my mother and Grams. Yours is a muddy yellow most of the time. You feel too much pressure to do well in school, to get out of Winchester. To always do better. I’m hoping the color brightens as time goes on. You deserve happiness.”